Dull Canvas
by theartistformerlyknownas
Summary: If the dull canvas of our wretched life/Is unembellished with such petty ware/As knives or poison, pyromania, rape/It is because our soul's too weak to dare." They all knew him, this man called The Joker, if only for a moment. Nolanverse
1. Grace

Grace Jennings never had wanted to be a foster parent. Four years of fertility treatments, thousands of dollars in travel expenses, the best clinics, and the most respected doctors had all failed to give her a child of her own. Why would she choose to raise someone else's?

But Daniel loved kids. He had been one of those guys who was just born to be a dad, someone who would coach Little League, go on camping trips, call his daughter "Princess". She'd hated to see him finally boxing up the cradle they'd bought before her first miscarriage, or trying not to smile at a baby in a stroller. So she'd caved.

Going through the application process had been a breeze. The state of New Jersey wasn't about to turn down a sweet young couple with a matching pair of Masters degrees. And so on September 18, 1987, they'd gotten their first foster child.

That was four years ago.

Things had changed.

Daniel was gone, driven away, Grace knew, by her infertility. Her failure. She was alone now. Well, except for the kids. But they didn't count.

They had never counted.

She's looking for a way out, trying to find a loophole. As far as she can tell, as soon as this next batch of kids gets shuttled off, that'll be it. Her ill-fated stint as a foster mother will be done, finished, kaput. And the sooner the better. One of these kids...she can't wait to see the system swallow him up.

There's not a lot she can say she knows about him, really. Not his age, (he could be anything from a tall eight to a scrawny eleven), not his name, (not one that he would respond to, at any rate), or even how he got those scars. He's hard to look at, all blond curls and brown eyes and raw pink wounds.

Grace can't stand him. He's tried to bolt three times in two months, and each time she's barely managed to collar him before he can hop the back fence. At dinner he'll poke at his food (she's never once seen him eat, though Goldfish crackers disappear by the box from her pantry), make sure she's watching, and then run his tongue along the inside of his mouth. The scars bulge grotesquely. They seem new, when she can force herself to stare long enough, barely healed over. The social worker said he came from an "unstable environment" and Grace hadn't thought to ask her to define "unstable". Maybe she should have.

It's easy to peek out the kitchen window from where she's standing, peeling potatoes over the sink. They're all out in the yard, Charlie, Liz, Victoria...she can't see the other one. Probably on the monkeybars. He spends hours swinging by his knees, laughing that weird, high-pitched laugh. She wonders what Daniel would think of her now. Is that what he had wanted? To see her playing mother to a freak?

She tries to dash the thought away, slams the peeler hard onto the counter, and begins to wash the potato skins down the sink. Him and his bleeding-heart theatrics. There are times when she thinks that all of this was a scam, some carefully-planned way to turn her into a frigid, resentful bitch. It gave him the perfect excuse to make tracks. It's not the kids' fault, she knows that. But they played a part, and she hates them for it.

Water starts to splash over the sides of the sink, slopping onto her shoes. With a curse, she leans over to turn off the faucet.

There's movement behind her, fast and unexpected and then...Pain. A sudden, lancing pain in her leg. She falls to her knees, trying to hold back a shriek. Someone's kneeling on the floor next to her, but she can't get her eyes to focus. Scars. That's all she can see. They stretch as he smiles, filling her vision. He's got the potato peeler in his hand and it's slick with blood. Her blood.

Grace sinks down until her face is pressed against the wood floor. She can't look. How could she possibly look?

She feels him batting at her ponytail like a kitten. "Gracie. Hey, Gracie...eyes up here." A small hand on her chin, and their faces are inches apart. He licks his lips and giggles. "Bye."

He's out the front door before she can blink, slamming it hard behind him. Only then does she risk glancing down. Her leg is covered in blood, and a long strip of skin dangles from the back of her calf.

She finds her voice, and screams.


	2. Nora Petunia?

**Author's Notes: Okay, so I feel like I was a little vague about the direction of this little fic last time. I'm not going for a linear story. Instead these are more like vignettes of the Joker's interactions with different people, ordinary people, who've never come across someone like him in their lives. I mean, how would you react in a situation like that? If you had absolutely no point of reference for a person? I _know_ I'd have a complete meltdown. But enough of this foolishness: on to the ficcage!**

0o0o0o0

You don't _quite_ know why she brought you here. Pity, maybe. But she doesn't pity _you_, oh no. The kid she saw at the bus stop, that's the one she feels for. Fifteen, tops, with blond hair he keeps pushing out of hollow, sunken eyes. (Drugstore eyeliner and some artful smudging. You're learning that a bit of makeup goes a long way.) Secondhand clothes, skinny arms, battered sneakers; probably reminded her of someone.

You chew the inside of your cheek thoughtfully, scar tissue thick and rough between your teeth. Whatever. The important part is that you're in a fifty-something year old woman's kitchen, watching her make you a, yeah, a roast beef sandwich.

_And here's to you, Mrs. Robinson, Jesus loves you more than you will know, oh, oh, oh..._

"Adam?"

_Of course_ you didn't give her your real name. Try to keep up.

Your eyes flick to her face. Well, the vicinity of her face. Lips, eyes, ears, nose, hair, its hard to focus. You wonder how hard it would be to rearrange them all. Picasso never seemed to know what the hell he was doing, but you, you've got this down pat.

"Adam? Are you all right?"

You widen your brown eyes at her ever so slightly. Now there's a trick with limited shelf life; just count yourself lucky your voice hasn't changed yet. "I don't want you going to any trouble for me, ma'am." Ma'am? Laying it on a tad thick there, aren't we?

"You just sit there and be patient, young man. It's no trouble at all." She starts slicing tomatoes, and you don't have the heart to tell her you hate them. "I haven't made lunch for anyone except myself for years."

"Why not? If you, uh, don't my asking."

"Not at all." Lettuce, mustard, onions. "I left my husband around '78, I think. Jesse, our son, went missing in Cambodia a couple years before that. He was in the army. We never really recovered from it; I guess we kind of defined our marriage through him."

"Uh-huh."

She slaps another piece of sourdough atop the tower of meat and gets a plate from the cupboard. "Anyway, we tried to make it work for a while afterwards, but Nick and I both knew it was a lost cause. So, long story short, we got a divorce, he kept the house and I moved out here."

You curl a leg up beneath you and tug idly at a shoelace, a tiny noose. "Sorry about that."

"Why? It's not your fault." The plate is placed in front of you with a slight thump. "Lemonade, sweetheart?"

"Sure." You watch as she produces a gigantic block of ice from the freezer and begins to hack at it with an ice pick. Huh. Do people still do that? You wonder suddenly what her name is; she must have told you. It's something old, you remember. Nora, or Petunia. One of those names a woman grows into five months before she dies.

"You know," Nora-Petunia says over her shoulder, "we're really very lucky we ran into one another. The buses around here are so damn slow, you'd probably still be waiting around in the heat. And I'd be breaking up all this ice for myself."

Fucking tomatoes. You try to eat around them.

"God, this is going to sound exactly like my mother, but you looked like you needed some feeding." She gives you a smile. Skipped the braces, Petunia-Nora?

You put down the sandwich and run a hand through your hair. "I just, I want you to know that I, uh, I really appreciate you takin' care of me like this. It's not something a lot of people would do. Especially with the, um, the..." You let your sentence trickle off into silence, twisting your lips.

Her eyes go the scars. And really, how could they not? Oh Nora, you were doing so _well_ until now. She sees you see her, too. Your tongue darts out, a long slow swipe to the corners of your mouth, as she sits down next to you.

"I'm...I'm so sorry, hon." Petunia puts her hand gingerly over yours. It's wet and cold. You can see tiny flecks of ice clinging to the pick in her other hand. "It's not my place, I shouldn't have-"

"Hey, it's okay. I'm used to it." You flash her a grin (and the scars stretch just beautifully). "Wanna know how I got 'em?"

Nora-Petunia's jaw tightens. "It's honestly none of my business.."

"No, really. I want you to know." A quick flip of the hand and your fingers are suddenly interlaced. You lean in until you can smell her perfume: not expensive, but it's sure trying. "One word, missus: shaving."

A loud, thin peal of laughter, and you're off, giggling and shrieking, unable to hold it in. She laughs too, confused, but at least she sees the humor in the situation. You like that about her.

So you laugh, and she laughs, and she laughs and you laugh, and you laugh and she laughs and then you snatch the ice pick up from the table and ram it into her throat.

She gags and twitches for a while, but it's over fast. You lay her out nice and neat on the kitchen floor. It'd be interesting to split her open, see her guts coiled up in wet, pink loop-de-loop-de-loops, like the rides at Coney Island. But the bus is due anytime now. So you settle for putting your soggy tomato slices on her chest instead.

Red's a good color on her.

0o0o0o0

Reviews are greatly appreciated!


	3. Josh

549 West 52nd Street is the end of the line. Everybody knows it. A place where washed-up actors and music video directors looking to make it big collide with pretentious, fresh-out-of-NYU playwrites. The Odette is where the art of theatre comes to die.

Josh sometimes wonders how the hell he ended up here. He'd come to New York with a plan; he'd been to the right schools, knew the right people. And it'd worked for a while. His first gig as wardrobe manager had been at St. Luke's, an Off Broadway theatre on 46th Street. Run-down, but in a bohemian kind of way. Curtains sewn together out of every cloth imaginable, beanbag chairs for the audience, a dusty set of bongos (which Josh never saw used, thank God) in the corner of the lobby. It wasn't exactly the Lincoln Center, but it was a start.

A start and a finish. In pretty quick succession, too. The theatre had been in trouble for a while, and, desperate to keep its head above water, the manager had taken a chance on an unknown author and his unknown play. Dumb bastard. The thing was a complete flop, and less than two months after being hired, Josh was out on the street, along with three makeup guys, a wardrobe assistant, and the stage manager.

He'd had to become yet another "Oh, I'm in show business" waiter. As if the city wasn't crawling with them already. His shitty studio apartment had been getting shittier by the day, and he was sick of hopping from theatre to theatre for interviews, walking up and down Broadway until his feet were sore. Because, of course, he couldn't afford a cab.

The decision to take the gig at The Odette had been born of sheer desperation. He hadn't been about to spend his first winter in New York City with the landlord threatening to turn off his heat.

It hadn't been that bad at first. Sure, the costuming department was God-awful, but the kind of plays they put on here didn't exactly require multiple wardrobe changes. Most of the performances were the experimental kind, with nameless characters, and scenery consisting of a single stool downstage. Life was okay. Still, he wasn't about to go around telling people where he was working. As far as his friends were concerned, he was still waiting tables.

Disaster had suddenly struck earlier this month, in the form of one Lilac Slam.

That's right. Lilac. Slam.

Newly-minted NYU diploma in hand, she'd come in with a script and a hell of a lot of misplaced confidence. Josh didn't know how the girl had managed to sell the idea to the manager, but before he knew what was going on, he was designing mind-bogglingly detailed outfits for, wait for it, _Gatsby: A Psychedelic Odyssey Through West Egg_. The clothes were disgusting, in his opinion, all technicolor suits and LSD-inspired patterns. Lilac Slam (she insisted everyone call her by her full name) was climbing the stairs up to wardrobe every day, hovering around Josh's work, explaining how each color was a "metaphor for the chaotic alienation of post-modern existence". She didn't seem to realize, as she rushed from rack to rack, peasant skirt swishing around her short legs, that he didn't give a damn.

So he'd been unable to contain his smug satisfaction when the play had encountered some...setbacks. Alex, the actor playing Gatsby, had been knifed on his way home one night; nothing life threatening, but he was out of the game. His understudy was a much smaller man, thin and barely brushing six feet, but it was worth re-fitting thirteen costumes just to watch Lilac Slam run around in a panic.

It got a little less funny when things suddenly started disappearing from the wardrobe room. Just bits and pieces at first: a vividly green tie, wine-colored leather gloves. Josh didn't know whether to be furious at himself for misplacing them, or to start bitching out the company. He'd ended up doing both, and padlocking the door. It was no use. In the next few weeks, bigger items started to go. A dusty purple suit jacket last Thursday, three pairs of shoes in various sizes on Saturday night.

He doesn't know what possessed him to stay up here and wait. He'd been locking up for the night, about to head down the piss-smelling stairwell to freedom, when his eyes had fallen on the padlock. Thing wasn't doing much good. Whoever the thief was, he was still getting in.

So he'd ordered Chinese, and as the theatre went dark and silent around him, settled in to wait.

**XXX**

He snaps awake three hours later, sees the moon shining through the tiny window. The tiny, open window. Shit.

A sound. Rustling, coming from behind the long racks of clothes.

Josh slides a box of cold egg rolls off his lap and gets slowly to his feet. Stupid, stupid, stupid. He shouldn't have fallen asleep, who knows how long this guy has been in here?

The racks are high enough for him to only have to duck a little as he comes up behind the intruder. His puts one foot carefully in front of the other, praying that his sneakers don't squeak.

A dark form is pushing impatiently through the garments, wire hangers squeaking as he shoves them aside. Josh can hear him muttering to himself.

"Nope...nope...uh, definitely not...nonono..."

He takes a deep breath. This won't be so hard. Really. Just confront the dude, scare him a little. No biggie... Oh God, he's going to die, isn't he?

Too late for that now. With a yell, he leaps at the trespasser, and shoves his body, much lighter than he'd thought, up against the wall. They struggle for a minute, clawing, punching, biting in the darkness, until Josh manages to back his opponent up into the corner nearest to the window. He keeps a forearm lodged firmly against the guy's throat, and squints at his features, thrown into sharp relief by the streetlights outside.

Oh, Jesus. Jesus Christ.

Black holes where eyes should be. Mouth a long, bloody smear from cheek to cheek. Josh recognizes the smell of greasepaint, stage makeup, but it doesn't make any difference. His captive grins at him, or at least, bares his yellowed teeth.

"Well, hi there."

The voice is high, nasal. There's an accent too. Chicago, maybe?

Josh tries to meet the dark eyes. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"Mmm." The intruder licks his lips; the wet, sucking sound seems to hang in the air between them. "Shopping."

"Uh-huh. Well, I hate to break it to you, pal, but this isn't a mall." He hopes he sounds tougher than he feels. A little extra pressure right below the Adam's apple, just in case.

His captive wriggles, lifts his neck so the bone of Josh's forearm digs in just so. "Sure, sure." A breathless giggle. "But, um, you really can't blame me for poking around. Clothes are a whatchamacallit, a weakness, of mine..."

Josh glances down at the guy's body. Nondescript outfit: jeans, white t-shirt, leather jacket. But even in the dim light he can see that the jacket is nice. Really nice. It feels like butter under his fingers.

"You know what good work looks like, yeah? 'Course you do. 'S talent. And all these glitzy little numbers," he jerks his head towards the racks, "are just leaping out at me."

"That's fantastic, but I'm dragging your ass downstairs and I'm calling the cops." Josh's left hand, the one holding the intruder's shoulder against the wall, is starting to get sore. He loosens his grip, just a little.

Mistake. Big, big, mistake. Before he can even draw a breath, he's slammed up into the corner, mad eyes inches from his own. There's a feather-light touch on his cheek, and he knows without looking that it's a knife.

"Dunno if it's a good idea to call in the calvary just yet. After all, it was a bitch and a half getting you to change the fit. I'd hate to be, ah, hauled off, before I could finish browsing."

The knife traces its way down to his lower lip and Josh does his best not to move. "So you...you-"

"Carved up your buddy?" The trespasser grins again. Something really is wrong with his face; two puckered, messy scars pull his lips into a permanent snarl. "Couldn't help it. He was just. Too. Tall." He leans in, his hot breath ghosting across Josh's cheek. "But, uh, that understudy? Per-fect."

This guy is crazy. Out of his fucking mind. And being this close to him is like being tied to a grenade. "Are you-" Josh swallows and starts again. "Are you gonna kill me?"

The clown laughs, nails on a chalkboard. "Stupid question, kid." His free hand inches up into Josh's hair, tangling in the roots. "What kind of a performer offs his wardrobe manager?"

_I'm dead..._

A sharp crack as his head is rammed into the wall. Then, silence.


End file.
